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Inside the Philly DA’s side hustle –selling seized homes to speculators and cops

planphilly.com

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Re: Inside the Philly DA’s side hustle –selling seized homes to speculators and cops

#21

Post by peterwwillis »

The police-acquired homes are a red herring. They represent a fraction of the properties being rebuilt by developers for new, rich, white renters. Anything that isn't nailed down in Fishtown, NoLibs, and Kensington is being bought up and developed into condos and apartments. The development is even pushing its way south down Broad Street, with multiple new complexes of apartments and shopping coming online.

Even if this seizure bs was not going on, nobody in this area of town will be able to afford to live there in 5 years. And there's no new public housing going up anywhere, because all the contractors are bidding ridiculously inflated prices to build them.

This is going to push everyone in the area into the streets, or jail, and push crime into every other corner of the city it can spread to, because nothing is being done to help the people who have to resort to drugs to survive. Philly is still very much a dangerous, desperate place to live.

Re: Inside the Philly DA’s side hustle –selling seized homes to speculators and cops

#22

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

abecedarius wrote: post #20
nikanj wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Basically, asset seizure enables the state to go after someone without no known source of income flaunting millions of dollars in sports cars, mansions, etc. Even if the state has no idea _what_ the suspect doing, just that they've got millions of dollars and no explanation on where it came from. > Why should seizing assets be okay under those circumstances? That one is a value judgement, and there is no right ans…

Lower probability of conviction can be addressed by increased severity of punishment upon conviction .

If that were true then we should expect the US to have a significantly lower rate of crime than other Western democracies given that:

the United States had by far the highest reported rate of incarceration in the world. Today, adult incarceration rates of the Western European democracies average around 100 per 100,000, and in the common law countries of Australia and Canada, the rates are only slightly higher. The U.S. rate in 2012 was seven times higher, at 707 per 100,000.[1]

For this to be possible the US must have been incarcerating more people, for longer, than other countries, which by your logic would reduce the rate of crime.

I was under the impression it was widely accepted that increased severity of punishment had only a small effect on rates of crime. The report I've referenced seems to agree.

1. Refer page 335 here http://johnjay.jjay.cuny.edu/nrc/NAS_report_on_incarceration...

I found that PDF here https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/ethics-in-question/2...

Re: Inside the Philly DA’s side hustle –selling seized homes to speculators and cops

#23

Post by ralusek »

peterwwillis wrote: post #21

The police-acquired homes are a red herring. They represent a fraction of the properties being rebuilt by developers for new, rich, white renters. Anything that isn't nailed down in Fishtown, NoLibs, and Kensington is being bought up and developed into condos and apartments. The development is even pushing its way south down Broad Street, with multiple new complexes of apartments and shopping coming online. Even if t…

Are they being rebuilt by developers for rich white renters? Are you sure they're not being built for rich renters?

Re: Inside the Philly DA’s side hustle –selling seized homes to speculators and cops

#24

Post by blackstrips »

forapurpose wrote: post #17
NPMaxwell wrote: post #2

Key element in the article: "The new Philadelphia DA, Larry Krasner, ran for office as a critic of forfeiture. But even his office admits the practice of law enforcement taking and selling homes will never be completely over. "'We have not suspended all forfeiture, but we have aggressively narrowed the size and scope,' said Krasner spokesperson Ben Waxman. 'You actually have to be convicted and the property has to be…

Adding to your quote and to your point, the next sentence in the article also is important: The office has sold at least one property since Krasner took office ... My understanding is that the reporter could find only one property sold by the current DA.

If there is legally sized property ... what else are they going to do with it?

Re: Inside the Philly DA’s side hustle –selling seized homes to speculators and cops

#25

Post by pas »

OpenBSD-empire wrote: post #19
citruspi wrote: post #7

Slightly related, I was reading this[0] over the weekend and it left me incensed. Behind a paywall, so relevant bits > Uri Rafaeli is an 83-year-old engineer and great-grandfather. He never expected the government to treat him like a drug dealer or gang banger. But last year the Michigan Court of Appeals held that a county government could use civil asset forfeiture—the same legal process used by police to confiscate…

The founding fathers tarred and feathered '''officials''' for less than this! WTF happened? Jefferson was right!

Their biggest problem was that the proceeds were going overseas.

Though this is really infuriating. Fucking with people just because they can.

Re: Inside the Philly DA’s side hustle –selling seized homes to speculators and cops

#26

Post by LeftTurnSignal »

mmanfrin wrote: post #3

Asset seizure is a fucking blight. If a chunk of your budget comes from selling seized property, then you are going to prioritize seizing property. Especially when property can be fucking seized without a conviction .

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/tv/watch/20bff2cad7ec1dde...

I believe that is the "doc" I watched a while ago that had some interesting info about TN's asset forfeiture laws.

Even the narrator was saying that the cops are too happy with it. I assume several other states have aggressive asset forfeiture laws as well.

Watching that doc made me hurt just because they show someone going to jail for a few grams of weed, losing their car, the state (I think?) police saying "this will make a fine vehicle for us," and smiling directly to the camera about it saying we don't make the laws (paraphrasing as it's been a while since I saw the doc).

/it still makes me angry just thinking about it

Re: Inside the Philly DA’s side hustle –selling seized homes to speculators and cops

#27

Post by peterwwillis »

ralusek wrote: post #23
peterwwillis wrote: post #21

The police-acquired homes are a red herring. They represent a fraction of the properties being rebuilt by developers for new, rich, white renters. Anything that isn't nailed down in Fishtown, NoLibs, and Kensington is being bought up and developed into condos and apartments. The development is even pushing its way south down Broad Street, with multiple new complexes of apartments and shopping coming online. Even if t…

Are they being rebuilt by developers for rich white renters? Are you sure they're not being built for rich renters?

They're being built for predominately rich white renters, based on the people moving in to these neighborhoods for the past few years. It's a classic gentrification story. Before you would have had mostly black and latino residents, and now on many blocks it's mostly white residents [and businesses]. The marketing is basically "Can't afford Williamsburg? Move to Fishtown."
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